


Second Front

by Headline (Newsy)



Series: Headline's Chronicles [4]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Original Character(s), POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newsy/pseuds/Headline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The good news is, the Autobot-Decepticon war has moved to a second planet.  The bad news is, well, see the good news... Headline adjusts to a new planet and a new teammate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

An endangered planet, if you think about it, is a frightening place to live.  
  
Cybertron had not seen peace for thousands upon thousands of vorns.  Only a few ancient mechs still survived who had ever known anything other than total war on a scarred planet.  And little hope remained for Cybertron to return to any state other than war-torn; every living being brought online and every technological implement forged since the fall of Kaon had been created with military supremacy in mind.  
  
Even the few civilian-function Autobots had wartime applications.  And that explained why we, the four civilian Autobots who composed the skeleton-crew press corps, were spending what could have been our down time playing paintball.  
  
“Headline, get down!”  
  
At Hubcap’s warning, I ducked just in time to avoid a perfectly targeted shot from Moonracer.  The pigment projectiles were harmless, but having a ridiculously bright green smudge between my optics was still not my idea of a good time.  
  
“Thanks, Hubs,” I said.  
  
“And _why_ do we have to do this again?” the junior member of the press corps griped, transforming to vehicle mode and swerving out of the way of another shot.  
  
“Does the phrase _embedded with the troops_ mean anything to you?” Raindance yelled from above us.  On the ground, his teammate Grand Slam summoned all his speed and tried to turn out of the way of yet another paint pellet – but a telltale yellow-orange splash on his right side proved his failure.  
  
“Gotcha!” Moonracer cackled.  
  
“I was already aware of that,” Grand Slam grumbled.  
  
“Hold your fire!” another feminine voice commanded.  Charging onto the scene in vehicle mode came Elita One, the de facto supreme Autobot commander since the disappearance of Optimus Prime tens of thousands of vorns before.  She fluidly transformed and stood directly in front of Moonracer, who immediately dropped her weapon.  
  
The rest of us fell in alongside Moonracer and came to attention.  “As you were,” Elita said.  Her face was somber as she delivered news that, in recent times, had become all too common.  “Mechs and femmes, I regret to inform you of another combat loss,” she sighed.  “Firestar has given her Spark in defense of the Autobot cause.”  
  
Moonracer looked as stunned as I felt.  Firestar was one of literally a dying breed, one of the last of Elita’s all-femme fighting force from before the integration of the troops.  She, like Elita One herself, had survived so many close calls that she had gained a reputation of near invincibility.  I worried for Moonracer, her sister in arms, and for Inferno, her devoted mate.  
  
“Moonracer, Headline – a word,” Elita said, pulling us aside from the others.  “Firestar counted the two of you among her closest friends.  I hope you will do her the honor of serving as pallbearers at her memorial next orn.”  
  
Both of us nodded in silent agreement to Elita’s request.  As we and Firestar had for Chromia, Moonracer and I would carry the body of our friend at the solemn remembrance ceremony.  
  
“Hubs, I guess this one’s yours,” I said quietly to Hubcap.  “I’m sorry… memorial coverage is hard, I know.”  
  
“But you won’t have to cover this alone,” Grand Slam and Raindance said in unison, their voices blending as their forms shifted and combined.  “You two have a point that we’re understaffed,” Slamdance said to both of us.  “Four bodies just aren’t enough to get the job done in wartime.  And I finally found us a fifth body.”  
  
“Good,” I said in long overdue relief.  Hubcap and I had joined the press corps within less than a vorn of each other, and for our entire time together, we’d complained to Slamdance about the ever-growing demands on our skills, our time and ultimately our frames.  
  
With this mysterious _fifth body_ on board, perhaps I could finally get a decent rest cycle… after the emotional wrench of the coming memorial.  
  
***  
  
“Inferno,” Moonracer quietly called.  “It’s time.”  
  
The tall red mech, optics hollow, drifted toward us in dronelike fashion.  Against the usual custom, he had decided to perform this last honor for his beloved.  He and Moonracer stood at the front of the bier holding Firestar’s Sparkless shell.  His friend and Moonracer’s mate Powerglide stood at left-center, directly across from Blaster.  Kup and I took our places at the rear and prepared to carry Firestar from the anteroom into the Council Tower’s grand assembly hall for the last time.  
  
The older, war-weary mech sadly shook his head.  “It never ends,” he said.  
  
I nodded in sorrowful agreement.  The war, and the memorials, had begun long before I had come online and had only increased as I matured.  I recalled the steady stream of remembrances for the missing when I was a mere few hundred vorns of age: Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, Jazz, Bumblebee, Wheeljack, Optimus Prime himself… more than half of the Autobot high command and many of Cybertron’s greatest warriors.  And in spite of the equally long absence of Megatron, all but one of his chief lieutenants and the top echelon of the Seeker Corps, the tide had not been stemmed in the many vorns since the disappearance of the Ark and her complement.  
  
At a signal from Elita One and Ultra Magnus, we solemnly raised the bier and carried the body of Firestar past a gathering of Autobots standing at attention.  Hubcap, holding a nondescript gray camera emblazoned with an Autobrand, followed the proceedings.  
  
The memorial continued with the eulogies of Ultra Magnus and Elita One.  Our silence was only broken by the occasional low keening sound from Inferno’s vocal mechanism.  Firestar’s mate, seated on the aisle directly to my right, leaned against my frame now and then for support.  Moonracer, to my left, clung to Powerglide’s arm and struggled to keep her composure.  I struggled as well, hearing tales of Firestar’s long and distinguished record of service and her heroic final act defending the civilian quarter of Iacon.  Though I had known many of the others who had fallen and vanished, Firestar, and Chromia before her, had been among the few with whom I felt any real kinship.  
  
I heard every word spoken by Elita and Magnus, but drifted in and out of full attention, looking now and then in Hubcap’s direction to distract myself from the raw sadness of the ceremony.  Only the Autobot sigil on his camera’s housing gave away the fact that the camera was, in fact, the newest member of the press corps.  The two seemed to be working together well for the smaller ‘Bot’s first assignment.  
  
Magnus, ever on military duty even when technically off military duty, subtly checked his on-board communicator.  His optics brightened and intensified as though he had just received either tremendously good news or ominously bad news.  Elita turned toward him and tilted her head slightly.  Underneath the unobtrusive gestures, I imagined their internal communicators buzzing with frantic activity.  
  
Elita directed another subtle nod toward us in the front row.  I again stood across from Kup and behind Blaster in the slow and somber procession out of the assembly hall.  We met Perceptor and his youthful assistant First Aid in the anteroom, and the two of them removed Firestar’s body from the bier to make the final preparations for entombment.  
  
Moonracer and I pulled Inferno toward us for whatever measure of comfort we could provide.  “Hang tough,” Moonracer encouraged him.  
  
“I will, ‘Racer,” Inferno quietly promised.  “You, too.”  
  
Finding no useful words, and finding my vocal mechanism hardly operable even if the words existed, I wrapped my arm around the larger ‘Bot’s waist.  Inferno silently returned the gesture.  
  
I regrouped with Hubcap immediately after leaving the anteroom.  He gave my hand a quick squeeze and, carrying his tiny teammate still in the form of a camera, walked with me back to headquarters.  A drive would have been faster, of course, but neither one of us felt much like driving.  
  
“So… who’s your friend?” I finally asked him halfway to HQ.  
  
Hubcap’s camera sprang from his hand and unfolded into a small robot.  A _very_ small robot.  Hubcap was a minibot and yet still dwarfed this mech.  “I’m Live Shot,” the little ‘Bot squeaked – his voice was not much more than a squeak.  
  
I resisted an urge to pat him on his tiny head.  “Hey there, little guy,” I said.  “I’m Headline.  Welcome aboard.”  
  
“Thanks,” Live Shot chirped.  “Wanna see something else?”  Before I could answer, he jumped and transformed into a third mode.  He landed in Hubcap’s hand in the form of a weapon.  
  
“You’re a triple-changer?” I said.  This little squirt was impressive.  Young, apparently, but impressive.  I reminded myself to congratulate Slamdance later for finding him.  
  
“Yep,” Hubcap answered for him.  “We think he might’ve been an offshoot of the Nova Cronum Tertiary Project.”  He tilted his head slightly as Live Shot transformed back to robot mode and landed on the ground again.  “A very _small_ offshoot.”  
  
 _“What do you mean, we think?”_ I messaged Hubcap over our internal channel.  Live Shot had to jog to keep up with our slow walk.  
  
 _“He keeps saying he doesn’t know where he came from,”_ Hubcap replied.  _“But it’s the only thing that makes sense.”_  
  
I agreed with him.  _“I think Swerve was making plans to expand the project before he was killed.  Maybe this was the expansion.  Wonder why we never heard about it?”_  
  
 _“Classified stuff doesn’t get talked about much,”_ Hubcap messaged back.  
  
Slamdance met us at the door.  “Looks like you’ve been introduced,” he greeted me.  
  
“Yep!” Live Shot said perkily before I could reply.  
  
Slamdance lowered his voice to a more somber tone.  “How was it?”  
  
“It was… it was a memorial,” Hubcap said with a heavy sigh.  
  
“It was hard,” I admitted.  “They’re all hard, but… it was hard.”  
  
“How’s Inferno holding up?” Slamdance asked.  
  
“Hard to tell,” I said.  “Who _holds up_ at the memorial for their mate?”  
  
Elita One and Ultra Magnus blew past us in vehicle mode, headed in the direction of the Decagon at top speed.  “They’re driving awful quick for inner Iacon,” Hubcap observed.  “Must be important.”  
  
“I’ll go,” Live Shot volunteered, starting to break into a run.  Slamdance signaled at me to intercept him as he tried to sprint away.  I caught the small mech by his shoulders and lifted him a meter or two off the ground.  His legs still flailed back and forth for a few kliks until he figured out he wasn’t moving.  
  
“No, you won’t,” Slamdance said firmly.  “One, you’re not going anywhere alone.  Two, if they went where I _think_ they went, _nobody_ gets in there.”  
  
“Where d’ya think they went?” Live Shot asked, still straining to escape my grasp.  
  
“CMC?” Hubcap suggested.  
  
“Yep,” Slamdance said.  Central Military Command, ensconced in the heart of the Decagon behind the heaviest of security, was accessible only to the top echelon of Autobot officers – now composed of Elita One, Ultra Magnus and their trusted circle of senior mechs.  
  
“Autobots!” Ultra Magnus’ voice crackled over our communicators.  “Assemble at comm HQ – now!”  So much for our CMC theory.  
  
“This is _big,”_ Slamdance said, his voice splitting in two as his form split in two.  Grand Slam and Raindance transformed into their faster vehicle modes and led the way to the central communications tower commanded by their former mentor Blaster.  
  
 _“Now_ we go,” I said, reluctantly allowing Live Shot’s feet to hit the ground.  The tiny mech took off after Grand Slam at a full run, nearly catching up to him before long.  “Is he that fast?” I asked Hubcap, impressed.  
  
“Nah.”  Hubcap transformed and headed for the comm tower.  “Slam’s that _slow.”_  
  
***  
  
“Autobots,” Magnus began the situation report to the tightly packed group, “we believe we have detected Cybertronian activity on an unidentified planet.  If this is true, this is vital knowledge for all of us – both of the planet as a potential new source of energy, and of a possible secondary Decepticon base of operations that we would then need to neutralize.”  
  
“What do you have, Blaster?” Elita One asked impatiently.  
  
The usually cool and collected communications officer looked uncharacteristically worried.  “High-level Decepticon frequency,” Blaster said.  “Perceptor’s trying to map the planet right now.”  
  
 _“High-level_ – let me see that,” Magnus said, pulling Blaster’s chair slightly out of the way.  He and Blaster together examined the signals, and Magnus waved Elita toward them as they compared the new readouts to some sort of database.  
  
“That’s not just high-level,” Elita breathed.  “That’s _highest_ -level.  That’s Megatron.”  
  



	2. Chapter 2

An audible gasp emanated from the group, followed by a low but intense murmur of conversation.  As long as Optimus Prime and the crew of the Ark had been missing and presumed dead, so had Megatron and the complement of Decepticons he had taken in pursuit of them.  
  
“Does that mean he’s alive?” Live Shot asked me, straining to see.  
  
“He wouldn’t be sending signals if he wasn’t alive,” I sighed.  Yes, he was still barely past the protoling stage, but barely-past-protolings could get annoying at times.  
  
“So now what?” Live Shot asked.  That, on the other hand, was a good question.  Megatron’s survival, after all these vorns, would certainly create at least two immediate problems: a leadership battle among the Decepticons, who had been ably and viciously commanded by Shockwave since Megatron’s disappearance; and even more trouble for the already strained Autobot forces.  
  
“If Megatron is alive…” Magnus said, his optics flashing more brightly than I had ever seen.  
  
“Optimus!” Elita gasped.  Her face came alive with the hope she had lacked for tens of thousands of vorns.  “Megatron was following them.  Blaster… we’ve got to try.”  
  
“Point of origin located,” Perceptor interrupted them.  He pointed to what looked to me like a random dot, toward the upper left of a display that looked to me like a random collection of dots.  “The signal is originating near this star,” he continued, “from one of several planets orbiting it.  I am attempting now to find any available data on this planet.”  
  
“Good.  Let us know,” Elita said in a hurried and almost dismissive manner.  Her optics remained riveted on Blaster and his efforts to contact the Matrix-bearer long presumed dead.  
  
“I’m trying the Ark first,” Blaster said, keeping his optics on the keys and screen in front of him.  With Magnus calling out the lost flagship’s dedicated frequency before he could look it up in his database, Blaster punched key after key with growing intensity.  
  
Slamdance, Hubcap and I, clustered in the back of the room, maneuvered until we found a mostly unobstructed view.  Live Shot squeezed in between Hubcap and me, trying in vain to see over the shoulders of the much taller mechs and femmes gathered between us and the console.  To keep him from noisily jumping around and straining his frame, I reluctantly lifted him up and propped him on my shoulder.  “Long as you’re there, short stuff,” I said, “mind making yourself useful?”  
  
“What?” Live Shot asked.  
  
“Transform to camera mode,” I said slowly and plainly, groaning inwardly.  Just how young _was_ he?  
  
“Autobot flagship Ark, this is Blaster,” the communication specialist spoke into a microphone on his console.  “Sending authentication via secure channel.  Any Autobots receiving, respond with secure authentication.”  
  
Almost immediately, a voice responded.  It was a voice long unheard, but a voice as easily recognized as Blaster’s, even after tens of thousands of vorns.  “Blaster – crank it up!  I’m barely gettin’ anything!”  
  
For protocol’s sake, Blaster waited to respond until he received the secure transmission proving the other mech’s identity.  When he finally spoke, though, he nearly exploded with relief.  “Jazz!  I thought we’d never hear you again!”  
  
“Cut the sappiness, ya overgrown tweeter,” Jazz said, the relief evident in his voice and his affectionate insult.  “Gimme a sitrep.”  
  
“A full sitrep’ll take forever,” Blaster said, further refining and amplifying the signal.  “Cybertron’s still where it was, the ‘Cons’re still the ‘Cons, Elita’s still in charge of us…”  His voice dropped.  “We’ve lost a lot, old friend.  Land and Sparks.  Just knowing there’s _someone_ alive from the Ark… first good news in a long time.”  
  
“Someone?” Jazz repeated.  _“Everyone’s_ alive – full complement – plus a mess of Decepticons.  _Megatron’s_ on this planet.  Starscream and a couple of his friends.  Soundwave and the runts.”  
  
Elita One commandeered Blaster’s microphone.  “Jazz, when you say ‘full complement’…”  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” Jazz said, a smile evident in his voice.  “Optimus is alive.  Looks different, but alive and well.”  
  
Elita’s optics brightened.  “Blaster – do you have video capability?”  
  
“I do, commander,” Blaster said.  He pressed a few buttons, and an image faded into existence on the large viewscreen.  The interior of the Ark looked markedly different, its walls tarnished and blended with unfamiliar materials contributed by the crash site on the new planet.  Jazz himself, though recognizable by his face and visor, appeared markedly different as well.  His body was larger and more rounded than the frame I remembered from so many vorns ago, and he bore strange and colorful new markings.  
  
“Jazz, we’ll be in contact later,” Elita said briskly.  
  
“Understood.”  Jazz appeared to wink under his visor.  
  
The video screen went to static.  Elita gripped Blaster’s shoulder firmly and said, “Try his old frequency.  Maybe it’s still the same.”  
  
Blaster struggled to recall the frequency of Optimus Prime’s on-board communicator, dialing tentatively with the occasional prompt from Ultra Magnus.  Elita One paced back and forth and appeared the most nervous, by far, of all; Optimus was not only her long-lost commander, but also her long-lost mate.  After such a long dormancy, I wondered, would his memory banks be intact?  Would his memories of Elita, of Magnus and Kup and the other high-ranking officers who remained on Cybertron – of Cybertron itself – be intact?  
  
Watching through the surprisingly sharp view provided by Live Shot, I prompted the young mech to zoom in on the video screen on Slamdance’s console.  A grainy and indistinct image emerged gradually from the static.  
  
“Optimus?” Elita pleaded.  
  
The image began to clear, revealing an alien, organic landscape serving as a backdrop for a familiar vessel.  It was terminally crippled, it was trapped within the landscape, but it was clearly the exterior of the Ark – or what was left of it.  In front of the stranded craft stood a tall and bulky red and blue mech, shoulder adorned with an Autobrand and face shielded by a silver armor plate.  His build was shockingly altered, perhaps a function of the odd planet on which he had been marooned, but the face was clearly that of Optimus Prime.  
  
“Elita?” he responded in a tone of wonderment and disbelief.  
  
Magnus and Blaster stood and saluted, as did the entire assembled group of Autobots, and Slamdance and Hubcap joined them.  Elita attempted to join in the gesture but was far too overcome with a wave of emotion held in for some fifty thousand vorns.  
  
I dropped Live Shot, who transformed mid-freefall, and both of us came to attention.  In unison, we joined Ultra Magnus as he led the tribute that had not been spoken since Optimus and the rest of the Ark’s complement vanished: “My life for the Prime.”  
  
“My life for Cybertron,” Prime replied, the age-old traditional pledge of self-sacrifice.  
  
“Optimus, where – where are you?” Elita stammered in a wavering voice.  
  
“Too far from you,” he said fondly.  Elita covered her mouth with one hand and touched the image of Optimus’ face on the viewscreen with the other.  
  
“We’ll rectify that soon enough,” Magnus said, placing a hand on Elita’s shoulder.  
  
“No,” Prime interrupted him, “we won’t.  Either of you leaving Cybertron, as long as I remain on this planet, is a risk the Autobots cannot afford to take.”  
  
“But –” Elita began to protest.  
  
“Elita, this is what we must do,” Prime stopped her with a mild rebuke.  “I know.  And so do you.”  
  
“My Spark for yours, Optimus,” she whispered, at once yielding the argument and affirming her love for her long-lost mate.  She lowered her head into her arms; Magnus tightened his grip on her shoulder.  
  
“And mine for yours,” Prime answered.  
  
Their bittersweet long-distance reunion was made even more bittersweet with the memory of Chromia, as Ultra Magnus somberly reminded everyone in the room with a brief aside to the commander.  “Prime… when we’re finished here, Elita and I will need to have a word with Ironhide.”  
  
Prime knew instantly by the tone of his old friend’s voice, and his optics dimmed.  “Chromia?”  
  
“He deserves to learn it from us,” Magnus confirmed.  
  
The two top Autobots – rather, the two top Autobots _on Cybertron_ – fell silent.  Blaster leaned back toward the rest of us and delivered a command.  “We’re gonna need most of you to leave.  Anyone with one-alpha security clearance, stick around.  Everybody else, clear out.”  
  
“What’s one-alpha security clearance?” Live Shot asked as I joined the larger group headed for the door.  
  
“If you have to ask, squirt,” I said, “you don’t have it.”  
  
***  
  
Perceptor had mapped a course to the Ark’s new home planet, an organic world called Earth by the native beings around the crash site.  The senior commanders – the senior commanders _on Cybertron;_ it was still hard to conceive of Prime and Prowl and the others having survived – had spent fifteen orns straight gathering information on the metallic machines of Earth and designing new templates for many of the Autobots.  Ultra Magnus, in the strategic role he had occupied since Prowl’s disappearance aboard the Ark, had made plans to send a few waves of reinforcements to join the rediscovered Ark crew.  And on Slamdance’s orders, I had submitted myself for the re-templating that preceded the journey to Earth.  
  
The templating chamber door produced a hiss and a squeak as I stepped out into the larger room.  I looked out from a frame I didn’t recognize: still the same shade of blue, but taller and boxier now, reminiscent of the frames of Ironhide and Ratchet but with a slightly more defined shape, and with a prominent backpack attached to my upper back and shoulders.  Tracks, who I only recognized by his distinctive red face, examined his sleek new frame with a look of satisfaction.  Silverbolt and his four smaller teammates, who retained only their colors from their previous Seeker-inspired designs, exchanged smiles and compliments.  Hot Spot, the leader of the emergency response team known as the Protectobots, entered the chamber after me under the curious gaze of his already re-templated squad.  
  
A red mech with a visored face and a somewhat rounded frame was obviously displeased with his new appearance.  “I hate this,” he complained in a voice seasoned with a subtle yet distinctive accent.  
  
“You don’t look so bad,” I said to the red mech, looking again at my own frame.  “At least you’re not… you know… a box.”  I ran an internal diagnostic to find out where all my specialized parts were, and to my surprise, nearly all of my communication circuits had been relocated into the backpack.  
  
“I used to be a _flyer,”_ the mech shouted.  “Look at me now.”  He cycled through his transformation to vehicle mode – an odd-looking, roundish ground vehicle – and back.  “A grounder.  I’m a _pilot,_ and I’m a slagging _grounder,”_ he said, launching into an angry rant.  “Tactically important to make me a grounder, Magnus said.  We need more grounders, Magnus said.  Grounders blend in better on the planet, Magnus said.”  He waved his hand in the direction of Silverbolt’s team.  “The Aerialbots are still aerial.”  He pointed at Tracks.  “And at least _he_ gets jetpacks.  I don’t get _anything.”_  
  
“You’re the pilot?” I asked, receiving an affirmative nod in reply.  “Then you get the controls of the shuttle.  None of the rest of us shlubs gets those.”  
  
“Meh.”  The red mech shrugged, but moderated his sour expression a bit as he extended a hand toward me.  “I’m Quartz, by the way.”  
  
“Headline,” I introduced myself and shook his hand.  “Good to know you.”  
  
“Wow!” a now familiar, small voice shouted.  “You look _different!”_  
  
I looked down to see Live Shot, still in his old frame, standing at my feet and smiling up at me.  “And you… don’t,” I remarked.  “Aren’t you getting templated?”  
  
“Nope,” Live Shot said.  “They said I’m disguised enough already.”  
  
“All right,” I said, wondering why _they_ thought a robot-camera-sonic blaster was any sort of disguise.  “Come on.  Let’s say goodbye to the guys.”  
  
“Aren’t we gonna pack anything?” the tiny triple-changer asked.  
  
“Nothing left to pack,” I said, running through my checklist aloud.  “The Ark’s auxiliary comm suite’s gonna be our office… and our quarters… once Jazz clears some sort of stuff out of there.  I’ve got a few datapads on me, all the old files I need are in the cargo bay already… and the rest of my equipment is you, squirt,” I said, cringing internally at the prospect of interminable time alone with the little proto.  
  
Live Shot beamed at his own importance.  “This is exciting,” he said.  “Just you and me, with a whole planet to cover!”  
  
“Yeah,” I grimaced.  “Exciting.”  
  
Before we boarded the outbound ship, we had time for one last visit to the office and a quick farewell to the half – or three-fifths, if Slamdance disengaged – of the press corps remaining on Cybertron.  As soon as I opened the door to headquarters, Hubcap began looking intently over my frame as though trying to memorize it.  
  
“Usually that kind of examination happens in medbay,” I lightly teased him.  
  
“I want to remember what you look like now,” Hubcap said.  “You know… in case you ever come back.”  
  
“In case I – Hubs, of _course_ I’m coming back,” I chuckled, hoping I sounded convincing to him – because I was far from convinced that I would ever see Cybertron again except through a telescope.  
  
“You ready to – _whoa.”_ Slamdance’s greeting was more abrupt but no more subtle.  
  
“Yes, I know, I look like a box,” I groaned as I pulled my supervisor back into his office for a private chat.  Perhaps one last desperate complaint would change his mind, but even if it didn’t, it would at least let him know my opinion on being a glorified chaperone.  
  
“Slamdance, I can’t do this,” I said in a hushed but urgent tone.  
  
“Sure you can,” he encouraged me.  “You’ve proven yourself here.  You’re ready for an interplanetary assignment.”  
  
“No,” I stopped him, subtly gesturing toward Live Shot and struggling to form a coherent statement.  “I mean I can’t do _this._   I – it – just – _no.”_  
  
“He’s talented.  Young, but talented.”  
  
“Sure, he’s talented,” I grumbled, “but he’s also overeager and… _energetic._   He’s barely more than a proto – I can’t take care of a proto by myself on some hunk of alien rock!”  
  
“He’s just like you when you first came on board, ace,” Slamdance gently chided me.  
  
“I couldn’t stand _myself_ when I first came on board.”  
  
“Aw, you’ll love him to death in no time,” Slamdance chuckled.  “Besides… I couldn’t turn you into a one-fembot Earth bureau.  A whole planet’s pretty big for just one of you.”  
  
“If you don’t want a one-fembot Earth bureau,” I countered in the most threatening whisper I could manage, “then send Hubs with me… because so help me, I will _kill_ that little runt!”  
  
“You forgot, ace,” Slamdance said with a wicked grin.  “That _little runt_ is also your weapon.”  
  
“Primus, why me?” I sighed.  
  
“Because,” Slamdance offered an unsolicited answer, “a planetary detail requires the most senior reporter available.”  
  
“I’m barely fifty-one thousand vorns old, and I’m the most senior,” I laughed ruefully.  “This _is_ a young press corps.”  
  
Slamdance looked serious now.  “You may be young by comparison with some of us, ace, but I call you _ace_ for a reason.  It’s because I trust you to think like a news bot independently… and that’s exactly what you’ll have to do.”  He walked me slowly toward the door and toward Live Shot and Hubcap.  “I can’t tell you when you’ll have to embed and when you’ll have to back away.  You’ll have to make most of those calls on your own,” he said.  “But that’s why I’m sending you there.  You’re the only one in this building I’d trust with making those calls without me.”  
  
“That makes _one_ of us who trusts me,” I said somewhat bitterly.  
  
Slamdance elbowed me and winked.  “There’s two of me, remember?”  
  
Hubcap shook my hand.  “Won’t be the same around here without you,” the minibot said.  “Till all are –”  
  
“Ah-ah-ah,” I cautioned him.  “That’s only for mechs who’re dying.”  
  
“Then, um… see you around?”  
  
“That works.”  I patted him on the shoulder.  “Goodbye, Hubs.”  
  
“You’re gonna be great,” Hubcap called after me as Live Shot and I turned to leave.  
  
“And you’ll get used to it,” Slamdance encouraged me.  
  
Quartz, the pilot, spoke a bit impatiently over the general communication channel to all of us – all _Autobots_ – at once.  “Any Autobots assigned to be outbound for Earth, takeoff is in one breem whether you are on board or not.”  
  
I transformed and opened my rear doors for Live Shot, who careened eagerly – and painfully – into my passenger compartment.  I closed my doors and started for the airstrip where an Earth-bound spacecraft awaited.  
  
Slamdance radioed one final, gentle instruction to me over the silent channel.  _“Headline… enjoy the ride.”_  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Departure ceremonies at the Iacon airstrip were notoriously short.  Wartime offered no room for frills, even when the departure was for a planet which, not very long ago, was uncharted.  
  
The brevity of the ceremony meant that I barely had time to say final farewells to anyone who had come to see the shuttle off.  It was just as well; I could barely find the words to say to the friends I was leaving behind for possibly a very long time.  
  
“Bye, Uncle Kup,” I whispered to the most veteran of Cybertron’s veteran warriors.  He smiled warmly and then broke into a full-bodied laugh at Skydive’s parting request for him to kick Shockwave into next cycle.  
  
“We’ll miss you, fresh oil,” Moonracer said, nearly yanking my arm out of its socket to pull me into a quick hug.  My vocal circuits locked up at the thought of never seeing the last of the old-guard femmes again.  
  
“I’ll take care of her,” Powerglide promised with a quick handshake.  
  
Even as Silverbolt’s Aerialbot team fell into line near the shuttle, Inferno pulled me aside for a private word.  “You don’t know how much your friendship meant to Firey, kid… especially when I was gone,” he said.  
  
“Aw, ‘Ferno, you’re gonna make me spring a leak,” I answered in a strained voice.  
  
“Hey!  Civvies!” Kup alerted us.  I squeezed Inferno’s hand, grabbed Live Shot by the arm and ran for the shuttle.  One by one in front of us, starting with Quartz, the pilot, the warriors smartly saluted Ultra Magnus and Elita One before entering the craft.  Magnus stopped Silverbolt for a handshake and a few words.  I shuddered; a command-rank ‘Bot breaking protocol during a departure ceremony was rarely a good sign.  
  
Live Shot and I simultaneously saluted as sharply as a couple of civilians could.  The little mech ran onto the shuttle behind Tracks while Elita stopped me.  “Thank you,” she said, nodding toward Moonracer.  
  
I could only fumble for an awkward reply.  “N-no, Elita.  Thank _you.”_  
  
Air Raid and Fireflight occupied the back row of the shuttle, Slingshot and Silverbolt the middle row.  Tracks, Live Shot and I settled into seats in the front of the passenger compartment.  Skydive dropped into the co-pilot’s seat next to Quartz.  As soon as he was secure, Quartz ignited the engines.  
  
“Shuttle, you’re clear for takeoff,” Blaster’s voice over the cockpit communicator prompted Quartz to begin taxiing down the runway at Iacon’s airfield.  The craft lifted off the ground with a mighty roar from the engines.  Silverbolt, never friendly with heights despite his flyer’s frame, stared uncomfortably at the shuttle floor while his teammates looked out the windows.  Live Shot squirmed and shifted in his seat, in contrast to the calm stillness projected by Tracks next to him.  
  
I watched the city of Iacon, and the entire planet of Cybertron, grow smaller and smaller as the shuttle departed first Iaconian airspace and then the gravitational pull of Cybertron itself.  A slight bump signaled the activation of the craft’s internal gravity generators.  Well, it was a slight bump to _most_ of us, at least.  The same bump, on someone of Live Shot’s size or lack thereof, was more of a violent jolt than a routine takeoff complication.  He yelped involuntarily and rattled back and forth in his seat.  
  
Space was beautiful: the heat of stars producing various brilliant yellows, reds, whites and blues; the surfaces of planets reflecting the light of the stars they orbited; the swirls and streaks of distant galaxies; all of it crystal clear without the distortion of the atmospheric gases and pollution held close to Cybertron’s surface by gravity.  But this time, seeing the majesty of Cybertron’s neighborhood of the universe was a bittersweet experience.  As much as I found space pleasing to my optic sensors, I felt a blend of sadness and trepidation at watching Cybertron shrink behind the ship until it was just another planetary speck.  
  
“Accel factor two,” Quartz announced before long, his visored optics focused straight ahead.  Skydive kept a careful eye on the controls.  Silverbolt looked intently at a windowless spot on the wall while the rest of his team chatted idly.  Tracks remained quiet and serious, preparing himself for whatever challenges the battles on the new planet might hold.  I calmly watched out the window, enjoying the dizzying view provided by faster-than-light travel and wondering where the now indistinguishable Cybertron was.  
  
Live Shot, on the other hand, was not enjoying the trip at all.  The small mech curled as tightly as he could without transforming and moaned softly.  
  
“Kid, you all right?” I asked him.  
  
“I feel like I’m gonna purge my fluids,” he whined.  Of course.  He was young enough that this must have been his first long-range flight of any kind, let alone of the interplanetary kind.  
  
“You’re just a little space-sick,” I reassured the small mech.  “Try transforming.  If nothing else, it’ll keep you from looking out the –”  Before I could finish my sentence, Live Shot gagged and heaved.  “Window.”  
  
“Everybody all right?” Quartz shouted in response to the clamor that followed.  
  
“I believe we have a first-time traveler,” Tracks wryly said, then turned toward Live Shot and pointed away from himself to the row behind us.  “If you’re going to purge, at least purge _that_ way.”  
  
“Sure,” Slingshot chuckled.  “Right onto my wing.”  
  
Live Shot’s systems calmed slightly.  “This is gonna be a _long trip,”_ he complained.  
  
“Yeah, it is,” I said, but without the edge of impatience I’d felt toward Live Shot since klik one.  “I was space-sick on my first jump to accel two.  But I made it.”  The small mech curled up again.  “Seriously, transform.”  
  
“To what?” he asked quietly.  
  
“Right.  Forgot.  Triple-changer,” I reminded myself.  “If you’re in camera mode, you won’t accidentally fire.”  
  
Live Shot tried to start his transformation sequence, but was stopped by another attack of the dry heaves.  “I… _hate…_ space travel,” he wheezed between near-purges.  
  
“Okay,” I sighed, gathering his tiny frame in my arms.  “Okay.  You’re more space-sick than I thought.”  
  
“What’s happening to me?” Live Shot wailed.  
  
“Nothing, I hope.”  I held his little body still as well as I could, hoping to keep his overwhelmed systems from noticing any more of the shuttle’s movements.  “You’ll get a medical once-over when we land… they’ll tell you if there’s anything really wrong.  For now, if you can’t transform, at least try to rest.”  
  
“M’kay,” Live Shot muttered, shifting slightly in my arms and dropping surprisingly quickly into a rest cycle.  I thought to place him in the seat he had been occupying, but reconsidered when the shuttle rattled with turbulence.  My frame seemed to cushion his from the movements of the craft.  
  
“He’s cute when he’s asleep,” Tracks teased me.  
  
“Shut up,” I laughed in reply.  But looking at the finally silent Live Shot, I had to agree with him.  
  
***  
  
It was impossible.  Yet it was true.  
  
In front of the shuttle, looking almost identical to his former appearance some fifty thousand vorns before, stood the long-missing chief medical officer of the Autobots.  He was the stuff of legend among us younger ‘Bots, and he was one of the only mechs in the missing Ark crew I had called a close friend… and _there he was._   I stepped off the shuttle onto the unfamiliar surface of the new planet, clad in strange shades of green and brown, and walked toward the very much alive mech thought dead.  
  
Live Shot’s legs wobbled underneath his weight as soon as I placed him on the ground.  The challenge of adjusting to the new planet’s gravitational differences was too much for his equilibrium, which had already been taxed by the trip despite the fact that he had rested for the bulk of the flight.  I lunged to catch him, but another legendary and impossible mech beat me to it.  
  
“Got ya, squirt,” he said.  “What do you call yourself?”  
  
“Live Shot,” the little ‘Bot whimpered.  
  
“Welcome to home away from home, Live Shot,” the taller mech said, large lights on the sides of his face flashing.  “I’m Wheeljack, and you’re space-sick.”  
  
“Next?” the first legendary mech invited me.  
  
“Is that me?” I said, finding myself a bit nervous to be addressing a mech I’d long thought dead.  
  
Ratchet looked carefully at me, and his optics brightened in recognition and surprise.  “Little Headline!”  
  
“Well… maybe not _little_ anymore,” I chuckled.  “I’m more _boxy_ now.”  
  
“What’s wrong with boxy?” the old medic replied in mock indignation.  “Look at Ironhide and me!”  
  
“You guys _always_ looked like boxes.”  I looked in the sleeker Wheeljack’s direction.  “And he _used_ to look like a box.  It’s not fair.”  
  
Ratchet smiled as he began the cursory medical exam.  “That’s little Headline, all right.”  
  
“Ratchet… it’s been fifty thousand vorns,” I said.  “Everyone remembers you – I mean, you being _you_ and all… how come you remember some civilian femme?”  
  
“It’s been less than a vorn of online time for us,” Ratchet explained.  “And one of the last patients I saw before I got on board this ship… was a certain _civilian femme_ whose fuel system was full of shrapnel holes.”  
  
“Springing leaks faster than you could patch them up.”  I shuddered, vividly reliving the close call I’d long kept in a dormant part of my memory bank.  
  
“And besides,” Ratchet said with a grin, “how could I forget the little ladybot who spent so much time in my briefings that she ended up calling me _Uncle Ratchy_ off duty?”  
  
I groaned at the juvenile nickname.  “That had to be embarrassing.”  
  
“Wasn’t too bad coming from a femme as young as you.”  Ratchet tapped my shoulders to check my reflexes.  _“Now,_ though…”  
  
“Don’t worry.  I’ll just call you what everyone else does.”  
  
“A string of profanities wouldn’t sound quite right coming from you.”  Ratchet directed a knowing nod toward a freshly patched and waxed yellow mech whose helmet design gave him away as Sunstreaker.  “And neither would Señor Crankypants.”  
  
Both of us laughed out loud.  I had to stop myself from staring at the old friend I had mourned for so long.  “We had memorials,” I said softly.  “We never called you dead – any of you – but we had to have memorials.  Just to officially move on with who we still had, I guess.”  
  
“Nothing we hadn’t done before,” Ratchet said, looking studiously at my optics.  
  
“I’m not used to talking to a mech _after_ his memorial,” I whispered.  
  
“Fair enough.”  Ratchet patted me firmly on one shoulder.  “Through and back, please.”  I hopped off the exam table and followed Ratchet’s directive to transform to vehicle mode and back.  “Perfect.  Clean bill of health, ladybot.”  
  
“And this little squirt’ll be fine after a few hours of local time,” Wheeljack said, delivering Live Shot into my hands in robot mode.  “He just needs some rest to get his systems calmed down and used to the gravity.”  
  
“Um, Wheeljack… what’s an hour?” I asked with a sheepish grin.  
  
“When this –” he handed me an odd-looking timepiece and pointed at an attachment – “goes from one of these –” he pointed to a small marking on the outer rim of the circular device – “to the next.”  
  
“I can’t wait until I get this place figured out,” I groused.  “I can’t even keep time anymore.”  
  
“Make friends with the locals,” Wheeljack suggested.  “They’re a little weird, but they help now and then.”  
  
“You?  Calling someone a little weird?”  
  
“Good to see you packed the press corps humor.”  Wheeljack blinked the light on the left side of his face to return the mocking sentiment.  
  
Wheeljack’s typically good-natured tease, like Ratchet’s new nickname that fit his old personality, came as a great relief.  If Slamdance was right, if I did eventually get used to this organic landscape and this nonsensical vehicle mode and the very concept of using my vehicle mode as a disguise, it would be in no small part due to the fact that the Earth-bound mechs had only been changed physically by their journey.  
  
I stepped back out of the Ark and took in more of the surroundings – my new neighborhood.  It was far less densely populated than Iacon or any of the other population centers of Cybertron, but it bore no resemblance to the more open areas of Cybertron either.  Even with few of the sentient natives on whom we Earth-bound ‘Bots had been briefed, the land still showed evidence of much life.  Small winged beings darted back and forth in the lower atmosphere; four-legged beings of various sizes scampered or galloped across the ground; a few creatures with neither legs nor wings slithered about.  
  
I knelt to the ground to examine more closely the greens and browns that decorated it and found that the green was not the color of the ground.  It was, rather, a dense collection of tiny, blade-shaped things that appeared _stuck to_ the ground.  I cautiously touched a few of the blades and found them to be soft and pliable.  Organic.  Perhaps they, too, were alive – which begged the question of why they apparently did not mind being trampled upon or eaten by the other creatures.  
  
“This place would be ‘Ceptor’s dream,” I marveled, remembering the conscripted Cybertronian CMO who would prefer to be still a full-time researcher.  
  
“Oh, hey, forgot,” Wheeljack said over my communicator, without introducing himself as protocol usually demanded.  Typical Wheeljack… again.  “Get in vehicle mode real quick.”  
  
“All right,” I radioed back to signal my compliance.  
  
“Initiate your clandestine hologram.”  
  
“My who what now?”  
  
“Just send the command like you would launch an internal diagnostic,” Wheeljack said.  I did so, and a hologram – not unlike a smaller-scale version of Hound’s signature diversions – shimmered into existence atop the seat behind my superfluous manual steering mechanism.  The hologram took the shape of a female organic native – female _human_ – with fair skin and long, reddish-brown cranial hair that bounced off her shoulders in messy waves.  
  
“What in the Pit?” I mumbled, forgetting for a moment that my communication channel was still open to Wheeljack.  
  
“Meet your holographic driver,” Wheeljack said in answer to my intended hypothetical question.  “Anybody with a vehicle mode has one… so pretty much everybody except your little friend there.  It’s gonna be SOP to have ‘em active whenever we’re in vehicle mode around humans – least until they get used to the idea of driverless cars.”  
  
I sent a second command to discontinue the hologram, and the human faded out of existence as quickly as she had appeared.  Upon transforming, I noticed a jealous look on Live Shot’s face.  “How come _you_ get the fun new toy?” he asked, half-joking.  
  
“Because _you_ get to keep your Cybertronian mode,” I replied, also only half-joking.  “Fair trade, that.”  I waved for Live Shot to follow me and returned to the Ark, following the time-worn signage that pointed the way to home away from home.  
  



	4. Chapter 4

The auxiliary communication suite in the battered, rock-encased remains of the Ark was nothing like the spacious, state-of-the-art and well-maintained press HQ in Iacon.  But for the foreseeable future, likely for the duration of what was almost certainly to be a long posting on Earth, it would be both home and office.  
  
The room had clearly not been designed with comfort in mind.  It was there only for emergencies, in case the main communication suite was taken out of commission by malfunction or attack, and it retained its emergency standby status – meaning that Live Shot and I could be temporarily evicted at a fraction of a klik’s notice.  It was equipped with the bare minimum of recording and editing equipment, the boxes from the cargo bay that held the files I’d packed, two chairs, and most disturbingly, only one recharge bunk.  
  
“So where’s _your_ bunk?” Live Shot laughed, jumping onto the bunk – which was sized for someone of _my_ size – and spreading his arms and legs to cover as much of it as possible.  
  
“Quiet, you,” I groaned.  “Just help me unpack, all right?”  
  
Live Shot complied, settling into one of the chairs and awkwardly fielding a box of datatracks that I slid in his direction.  Growing impatient before long with sorting the files one by one, he struggled with the box and dumped its contents onto the floor in front of him.  The pile invaded the beginning of a neat stack I had only started to assemble.  
  
“That’s _it!”_ I shouted over the din of datatracks falling over each other into a disorganized heap.  “I’m doing this by myself!”  
  
“But it’s a –” Live Shot started to protest.  
  
“Just _sit down!”_ I snapped.  
  
Live Shot complied and assumed a slightly pouty expression.  Defiantly, he collected a few datatracks from the pile and began examining them.  One held his attention longer than the others.  “Hey, Headline – this one doesn’t belong here.”  
  
“How do you know?” I asked, taking it out of his hand and finding that, surprisingly, he was right.  
  
“It says ‘Jazz’ on it,” he said with a cheeky smile.  
  
I opened my mouth to reply, but thought better of it, instead dialing the saboteur’s frequency.  “Jazz, I don’t think you finished moving out,” I greeted him.  
  
“You found part of the stash!” he said gleefully.  “Play it.  Whichever one you found, play it.”  
  
“You heard him,” I directed Live Shot, then spoke into my communicator again.  “Jazz, what’s so important that –”  
  
“Just _play it,”_ Jazz laughed before dropping the conversation abruptly.  
  
Live Shot placed the datatrack in the console and pushed play.  No video appeared, but a polyphonic, melodic series of audio tones played, joined shortly by a pair of equally melodic voices.  _“I don’t like you, but I love you… seems that I’m always thinking of you…”_  
  
Live Shot shrugged his shoulders.  “I don’t get it.”  
  
“Neither do I,” I said, waving my hand to shush him.  “But I kinda like it.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Live Shot agreed as the melodic sound continued.  He swayed his frame back and forth to the slow, easy beat.  “Kinda relaxing.”  
  
“No time to relax yet.  We’ve gotta finish settling in.”  I collected another two handfuls of files.  “But leave that playing, will ya?”  
  
Before Live Shot could acknowledge me, and before I could put away even one more file, the pleasant sound disappeared under the harsh blare of klaxons.  The datatracks I had been holding crashed to the floor as I hastily grabbed a blank track with one hand and Live Shot with the other.  
  
“Where are we going?” Live Shot yelled over the wailing of the alarms.  
  
“We’ll find out in a klik, short stuff,” I shouted back.  I followed the sound of pounding footfalls until I found the collection of mechs gathered around the Ark’s semi-sentient central computer, Teletraan-1.  
  
Optimus Prime’s second-in-command, Prowl, another mech of legend alive again, stood to Teletraan’s right and pointed instructively at the screen.  “Teletraan has picked up three Decepticon signals –” the display on Teletraan’s screen changed from a radar readout to an image of a structure presumably built by the local intelligent life – “approaching a power plant in Multnomah County.  The speed of their movement indicates that the hostile force is most likely composed of Seekers.”  
  
Just as Jazz had briefly revealed in the Ark crew’s first communication from Earth, Starscream and two of his cohorts were indeed alive and operating on this new planet.  Though it was not technically new information, it still came as a shock.  
  
Prowl stepped away from Teletraan, yielding the floor to the only mech on the planet who outranked him.  Being in the same room with an _image_ of the great Optimus Prime had been amazing enough; being in the same room with the mech himself filled me with thrilled anxiety.  This was the wielder of the power of the Matrix of Leadership, the great commander who inspired the devotion and trust of all under his watch… and after thousands of vorns of being presumed dead, of the Matrix itself being presumed destroyed, the Prime was almost within arm’s reach.  
  
“Autobots,” Optimus addressed the gathering of warriors, “you know what we must do.  We must preserve the power plant if possible, we must do all in our power to prevent the Decepticons from gaining the resources it offers, and we must protect – at any cost – the lives of the humans inside it.  Jazz, assemble a force.”  
  
Before his disappearance aboard the Ark, Jazz had been renowned for his knowledge of the capabilities and personalities of the Autobot fighters, and Prime had called on him to assemble battle units frequently.  It seemed he hadn’t lost his touch in the new environment.  He called the names of several mechs: Bumblebee, small and skilled enough for infiltration; Trailbreaker, equipped with a force field that could defend against the Seekers’ specialized weapons; Wheeljack, capable of battlefield improvisation and patch-and-weld medicine; Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, a formidable one-two punch of raw firepower; Tracks, like Sideswipe able to take to the air when necessary.  Jazz took a place in the team himself, as he usually did, and Prime joined them as well, as always.  “Transform and roll!” Prime ordered, and the seven mechs with him ran single-file out of the Ark before collapsing into vehicle modes and roaring in what I presumed was the direction of Multnomah County.  
  
I looked at Live Shot and blinked one optic.  
  
Live Shot looked at me and grinned.  
  
“Let’s see what we can do,” I said, following the example of the warriors and pursuing them, with my holographic driver appearing to sit behind my steering wheel and Live Shot bouncing excitedly in my passenger compartment.  
  
I fell in behind Trailbreaker, the slowest of the group and therefore the one chosen to bring up the rear, and followed the Autobot fighting force to a paved, multiple-lane road called Interstate 84.  “Um, Headline?” Live Shot said nervously, peeking out the rear window of my passenger compartment.  
  
“Trying to drive here,” I testily replied.  
  
“We’re kinda being followed,” Live Shot said.  He stopped looking out the window and crouched into a corner, seemingly ready to transform to weapon mode at a klik’s notice.  
  
“There’s hundreds of vehicles on this road,” I reassured the young mech.  “I’m sure none of them are following us on purpose.”  
  
Just to be sure, I checked my rear view and saw a small, pale yellow ground vehicle built somewhat like a packing crate, barely large enough for the two humans inside, following me closely enough to see up my tailpipe.  I quickly changed lanes once… twice… three times, but the vehicle remained just as close through every maneuver.  
  
“Vector Sigma, you’re right,” I said.  I quickly accessed the communication frequency of the one mech who would both have the answer I needed and forgive the circumstances of the question.  “Jazz, this is Headline.  Please don’t tell Prime, but –”  
  
“But you’re right behind Trails, aren’t ya?” Jazz cackled.  
  
“And I’m being tailgated,” I whispered.  “Ground vehicle, kind of a dirty yellow, looks like a packing crate on wheels… little bigger than Bumblebee… two humans or holo-humans inside.  Any Decepticons fit that description?”  
  
“Not a one,” Jazz said to my great relief.  “You’ve got genuine humans on your bumper.  Some of ‘em kinda like to follow news trucks.”  
  
“So _that’s_ what this boxy thing is,” I mused.  
  
Decepticon or no, having anyone on my bumper heightened my anxiety level considerably.  I was only able to relax when the humans gave up the chase and exited the interstate.  
  
Multnomah County, it turned out, was very near the Ark’s location, which made the westward drive mercifully short.  Before long, we were within visual range of the power plant that had been displayed on Teletraan’s screen.  The human authorities waved Optimus Prime and his forces through their roadblock, and they made their way directly to the building.  I heeded the roadblock and peeled off to what I deemed to be a safe location before releasing Live Shot.  
  
“Camera mode, squirt,” I prompted him mid-transformation.  Refreshingly, he transformed without a word and landed in my right hand with perfect timing.  
  
I watched through Live Shot’s viewfinder as the three most feared members of the Seeker Corps – Thundercracker, Skywarp and Starscream – streaked into view.  Their colors remained the same, and the trademark three-mech aerial formation was familiar, but their Cybertronian triangular forms had been replaced by Earth-style military jet modes.  
  
The Seekers’ shape reminded Live Shot and me of the same thing at the same time.  “Silverbolt!” we exclaimed in unison.  
  
“Can’t he and his guys fly?” Live Shot asked.  
  
“They sure can,” I said.  “Even if ‘Bolt would rather walk.”  
  
“Then why aren’t they here?” Live Shot followed up.  
  
“That,” I said, “is a question for Jazz later.”  
  
Live Shot, not content to leave it as a question for Jazz later, continued brainstorming.  “Maybe they’re out on patrol somewhere.”  
  
“They could’ve come here if they got called back.”  
  
“Maybe they ran into action.”  
  
“They could’ve called reinforcements.”  
  
“Maybe… maybe they’re hurt.”  
  
I tried not to laugh at the ridiculousness of all five mechs being out of commission and out of communication so quickly that no message had reached the Ark.  “All of them?”  
  
“You never know,” Live Shot said.  “It’s war, isn’t it?”  
  
I mulled over his words for only a few kliks before I realized that my young charge was right.  “Yeah,” I said, now concerned for the welfare of Silverbolt and his aerial team.  “But it’s still a question for Jazz later.”  
  
At the front line – if there was a single front line in this urban warfare setting – Optimus Prime briskly delivered battle orders to his troops.  I heard none of the orders but saw their outcome: Sideswipe and Tracks took to the air to engage the Seekers, while Sunstreaker provided support below in the form of ground-to-air missiles.  Jazz and Bumblebee, with Wheeljack giving cover, barged into the power plant and emerged in vehicle mode with several human passengers.  
  
Starscream transformed and landed with a flourish, and Prime and Trailbreaker were waiting for him.  Prime, armed with his rifle, took two shots at Starscream, who artfully dodged both.  The Seekers’ arrogant commander unleashed his null ray but found it neutralized by Trailbreaker’s force field.  With all three Seekers occupied, Starscream on the ground and Skywarp and Thundercracker above, Jazz and Bumblebee pulled another group of humans safely from the plant and went back for a third payload.  
  
Skywarp – never renowned for his brains – finally engaged his teleportation skill, shimmering out of sight before Tracks could shoot him and re-materializing behind the flame-clad Autobot.  Tracks anticipated the move and darted out of the way, but not before Skywarp landed a blow on his jetpacks.  Now hemorrhaging fuel, Tracks returned fire, dealing damage to Skywarp’s nosecone on his way to the ground in a painful forced landing.  
  
Undaunted, Sideswipe landed amid increasing fire from the angry and wounded Skywarp and literally threw his yellow twin into the air before re-launching himself.  Sunstreaker grabbed Skywarp’s already damaged nosecone and dented it several times with his fists before jumping to the ground and depositing a missile in one of the purple Seeker’s wings as an explosive farewell.  The distraction was enough for Sideswipe to gain the element of surprise on Thundercracker and shoot his rudder out of commission.  The blue jet careened haphazardly toward the ground, where Starscream was locked in an apparent stalemate with Optimus Prime – until the Seekers’ commander took his subordinate’s nosecone in the aft.  
  
“You incompetent heap of _scrap!”_ Starscream bellowed – well, in his voice, a bellow translated to more of a shriek – loudly enough for me to clearly hear his tirade at Thundercracker.  Prime used the moment to add to the embarrassing damage Thundercracker’s out-of-control landing had created, picking up the angry Starscream and tossing him in a forced body-slam onto Thundercracker before the jet had a chance to transform and be further berated.  
  
A second voice cried out loudly enough to be heard at a distance.  This was Trailbreaker.  Skywarp had transformed and, ignoring the damage from his earlier injuries, separated the veteran Autobot from Prime and pinned him up against the outer wall of the power plant.  Trailbreaker was fighting doggedly, but had to disengage his force field in order to fire and so was taking massive damage from Skywarp’s point-blank barrage.  Jazz and Bumblebee poked the front ends of their vehicle modes out of the plant but rapidly backed into the building again upon seeing Skywarp so close to their position and, not far away, Starscream and Thundercracker regrouping.  
  
Prime, now with help from Sunstreaker, battled to keep Starscream and Thundercracker from regrouping fully, matching them shot-for-shot and pushing them further back from the plant.  Tracks, fuel still draining steadily from his injury, gathered himself and moved to attack Skywarp from the Seeker’s left, taking his attention away from both Trailbreaker and the plant itself.  Wheeljack continued providing cover fire for Bumblebee and Jazz as they made good their escape with the remaining humans.  Once they were at a safe distance from the plant, he waited for a clear shot at Skywarp and finally took it just before Tracks dropped to one knee, fatigued from fuel loss.  Trailbreaker left a smear of oil and mech fluid on the wall of the power plant as he slumped into an awkward seated position.  
  
Skywarp, all but completely disabled by the accumulated damage to his frame, transformed and flew into a wobbly and solitary retreat.  Wheeljack ran toward Tracks and Trailbreaker and darted back and forth between the two injured mechs, applying temporary patches to bring the fluid loss under control.  They both clearly needed more extensive medical attention, though; I shuddered to think how much damage a smart Skywarp could have done.  
  
Fortunately for the two injured mechs, the day had been won.  Starscream and Thundercracker had decided they’d had enough of the business end of Prime’s rifle and Sunstreaker’s missile launchers.  Soon the Seekers’ contrails were all that was visible of them as they beat a hasty retreat.  
  
Prime summoned his trailer unit and transformed.  The attachment had ample room to ferry both Tracks and Trailbreaker back to the Ark.  Wheeljack provided Prime an escort of sorts, while the others remained at the plant in case of a Decepticon follow-up attack.  
  
I attempted to conceal myself as I transformed for the return trip, but Wheeljack spotted me.  “Long as you’re there,” he joked by way of greeting, “care to join a security detail?”  I heard Prime laughing to himself as I sighed and followed Wheeljack.  
  
“Well, kid, we’re _security_ for the next few kliks,” I said to Live Shot.  “I can count on you to keep an optic out back there, right?”  
  
Live Shot clambered to his feet and looked out my back window.  “You got it!” he chirped.  
  
Before we reached the Ark, Ratchet met Prime and circled to the back of his trailer before transforming to robot mode and leaping into the attachment.  I looked admiringly at the chief medical officer who had never lost his battlefield-medic instincts.  Tracks was able to stand to meet Ratchet, a good sign from the sleek warrior, but Trailbreaker made no discernible movement.  
  
“I never saw three Seekers get driven off that fast on Cybertron,” Live Shot said.  
  
“You never saw most of _these_ guys on Cybertron,” I explained, gesturing toward the victorious warriors as we rolled into our new home.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Ironhide shifted uncomfortably in his front-row seat in the briefing room and repeatedly checked his chronometer.  Any moment now, he would learn the information he so anxiously awaited, the condition of his old friend Trailbreaker.  One legendary mech who was allegedly dead awaiting word on another legendary mech who was allegedly dead.  The thought still scrambled my processor.  
  
Though I had never been particularly well acquainted with Ironhide, I still owed him one courtesy before Prowl and Ratchet could begin speaking.  
  
“Ironhide?” I cautiously said, creeping up next to him.  “I’m – I’m Headline.  I was a friend of Chromia’s… I’m sorry you had to hear so late and so far from home.”  
  
“Thanks, kid,” the older mech replied as almost an automatic formality before turning his head slightly for a closer look at me.  _“You’re_ fresh oil?”  I smiled in recognition at the nickname Chromia and the other femmes had frequently applied to me; Ironhide smiled back but quickly turned his attention to a burst of activity at the podium.  I scrambled to the seat I had saved and tapped Live Shot, in camera mode on my tripod, to alert him that it was time to roll.  
  
Prowl-led briefings on Cybertron, from those I recalled and from those about which Slamdance had complained, were never much fun.  They had been all dry, barely interesting illustrated narratives of what everyone had already seen.  Had they been the slightest bit engaging, they would have been pure Autobot military propaganda.  
  
From the progress of this briefing so far, it seemed that Prowl hadn’t lost his form.  
  
“Does he _have_ to use the pointer?” Live Shot groaned quietly as he captured the proceedings.  
  
 _“Silent channel, kid,”_ I reminded him over said silent channel.  _“Anything you say out loud ends up on tape.”_ Still, I couldn’t help smiling to myself at Live Shot’s observation.  Prowl, with his laser pointer and his slide show of still pictures from the battle’s aftermath, behaved more like an academic lecturer than the strategist he was.  
  
 _“Why is Prowl doing this anyway?”_ Live Shot complained on the silent channel.  _“He wasn’t even there.”  
  
“It’s protocol, I guess,”_ I responded.  _“Either that, or they want to put us into rest cycle before we can ask any questions.”_  
  
Before the urge to recharge could win out, Prowl said some very welcome words.  “Now, I’ll turn the floor over to Ratchet for a medical update.”  
  
Everyone else apparently felt the same way about Prowl’s departure from the podium.  Most of the mechs in the room leaned noticeably forward or straightened in their seats.  “Before anyone can ask me how anyone is,” Ratchet began with a promising smile, “everyone’s fine.  Tracks was patched up and released – only reason he’s not here as proof is he’s on patrol.  Trailbreaker is on enforced rest for a case of energon starvation, but his frame’s all patched.”  The CMO’s smile broadened as he nodded toward his assistant with an optic cast in Prime’s direction.  “And for the official record, sir, ‘Jack is reasons one through five that they’re in such good shape already.  Without his patch-and-weld, I’d still be patching.”  
  
“Noted,” Prime said in businesslike fashion.  
  
“And, uh… that’s the medical update.”  Ratchet’s awkward conclusion sent a ripple of laughter through the room.  He never was much for standing at a podium.  
  
“Questions for anyone?” Prowl invited.  
  
I looked at Live Shot and smiled as we simultaneously recalled the query we had planned before the start of the battle.  “One for Jazz,” I called, standing to be recognized.  Jazz replaced Ratchet at the podium.  “This was largely an aerial battle – why no Aerial _bots?”_  
  
Jazz, to my surprise, looked uncomfortably in several directions: first toward Wheeljack, who shrugged nonchalantly; then toward Ratchet, who did the same; then toward Prime, who made no discernible movement but, from Jazz’ reaction, sent him a message on the officers’ encrypted silent channel.  
  
“Uh, the Aerialbots were – _are_ – they’re out of commission,” Jazz said carefully, never taking his focus away from Prime.  “They, ah, they need some upgrades for their… new function on Earth, and they’ve been grounded until they’re done.”  
  
“Didn’t they already get templated for their Earth functions before they came here, just like Tracks and Quartz and me?” I pressed.  
  
Jazz paused and waited for what was apparently another prompt from Prime.  “They did, but – um – they’re being re-fit to meet some previously unforeseen needs.”  That was almost definitely a scripted answer.  It wasn’t like Jazz to use formal language like _previously unforeseen needs_ in an off-the-cuff reply.  
  
“What unforeseen needs would these be?” I continued.  
  
This time, Prime stood up and took the question – or rather, _didn’t_ take the question.  “Any other details on the Aerialbots’ status are level-two classified, medical personnel and senior officers only,” he said briskly.  “If that’s all the questions, we’ll conclude here.”  
  
 _“I think we can work with that,”_ I quickly silent-messaged Live Shot.  
  
 _“Yeah,”_ he communicated back.  
  
“That’s all the –”  I couldn’t even finish the sentence before the officers rushed from the room.  “Well… that was weird,” I griped.  
  
“How’s some fresh-oil civvie go complaining when she got more face time with the brass than _us?”_ I heard a familiar voice grousing behind me.  I turned to see Sunstreaker finishing his question to a red mech I had not yet seen up close and in detail since my arrival.  
  
“Slagged if I know, Suns,” said the red mech, whose voice and casual use of nickname gave him away as Sunstreaker’s brother Sideswipe.  
  
Sunstreaker narrowly missed colliding with me as he turned to leave the briefing.  After a moment of looking intently at me, he offered me what passed for a greeting.  “I recognize you.  I think.”  
  
“Hello, Sunstreaker,” I equally grudgingly replied.  
  
The golden warrior leaned slightly toward me.  “Civvie?”  He looked me up and down with no subtlety whatsoever, ending his inspection with a less-than-impressed look on his face.  “You’re all…”  
  
“I know, I know,” I interrupted.  “Boxy.”  
  
“Nothing wrong with boxy,” Sunstreaker said.  
  
I gestured toward Ironhide, who was still within aural range.  “You’re just saying that because he’ll hurt you otherwise.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sunstreaker admitted.  To my surprise, he laughed; to my greater surprise, so did I.  
  
“Love that sound,” Jazz said out of nowhere.  
  
Thankful for the distraction from what had quickly become a rather awkward exchange, I stopped and spun on my heels to face him.  “What sound?”  
  
“Voice of a singer,” he said with an easygoing smile.  “And you’ve got one, lady femme.”  
  
“Jazz,” I said slowly, tilting my head to indicate my confusion, “I barely even know what a singer _is.”_  
  
Jazz laughed and shoved a datatrack into my hand.  “Here.  Play it later.  And try singing along – just say what they’re saying, exactly the pitch they say it.”  His grin broadened.  “Trust me.”  
  
“Oh, yeah,” I snickered, grabbing Live Shot by the arm as soon as he transformed to keep him from disappearing.  _“That’s_ a face I can trust.”  
  
Despite myself, I smiled a genuine smile on the way back to the office/quarters I now shared with Live Shot.  If this alien and frightening place was to be home, at least I would have some help adapting to home along the way: Prowl and his briefings had not changed after tens of thousands of vorns of stasis, and neither had the warrior twins and their egos; Jazz had apparently appointed himself ambassador and minister of culture; even the Decepticons were the same old enemies despite the new frames.  
  
And even over distance, my responsibility to Slamdance was unchanged, another fact I found oddly comforting.  Live Shot cannonballed onto the bunk as soon as I opened the door to our quarters.  I chuckled lightly at his uncontrolled energy and powered up the communication console, dialing Slamdance’s frequency and hoping it would work.  
  
“So, how’s Earth treating you kids?”  It worked.  Even better, Slamdance was in a good mood.  
  
“Not bad, I suppose,” I said with a pleasantness that surprised me.  “And we’ve already got ‘em squirming.”  
  
“No, wait!” Live Shot squeaked.  “Let me tell him!”  Slamdance and I both laughed heartily.  Live Shot bounded into my chair – like the single bunk, much too large for a mech his size – and began prattling excitedly about the battle, the briefing and the officers’ evading of questions.  
  
I stretched out on the bunk, darkened my optics and allowed myself to fully unwind.  Perhaps this Earth wouldn’t be so bad after all.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Original characters Headline and Live Shot created by the author; Quartz created by Drivaaar of The Allspark. Other characters, as well as Transformers itself, are the property of Hasbro and used for non-profitable entertainment purposes only. "You've Really Got a Hold On Me," music and lyrics by Smokey Robinson. And apologies to Shades of the Allspark for ganking her fantastic nickname for a certain crusty medic...


End file.
